iirc, from older articles, which differ from this nice result, bile acids contain cholesterol(s) and they're generally reabsorbed in the intestines, so the fiber is conjectured to bind with some before reabsorption, expelling the bound fraction of circulating cholesterol in feces.
this result in the paper is very interesting in the conjecture is that the gut microbiome is altered in a beneficial way, and that the effect (with the resulting lowering of cholesterol) persists for weeks after even 2 days of oats.
We know almost nothing about how digestion works, but fiber has the added benefit of lining your intestines, preventing the absorption of some nutrients. It also helps push things through, so they spend less time sitting around being absorbed.
Oh boy. Now we’re entering the fiber era. We’re just leaving the protein era. Before that it was the intermittent fasting era. Before that it was the keto era. The low fat era was probably a few before that.
I hear about fiber constantly all of the sudden. You might be right about it, but how do we know it’s different than. All the past nutrition tends?
I feel like we're due for something really ridiculous next. I've been paying attention to macros, fibre, salt, and having a reasonably varied diet for years; we've done salt, fat, carbs, protein, and now we're doing fibre.
"Eat a varied diet" seems boring but maybe those influencers selling pills made from 500 vegetables were ahead of the curve all along.
It would probably be better to just eat all those different vegetables as part of actual meals to get a varied diet, rather than in pill form.
I was under the impression that more protein and less salt/fat/carbs are still kinda the trend? If more fiber gets added to the mix I guess it is essentially telling people to eat more plants, thus leading to more varied diets overall.
It is funny how you can break diet/nutrition into generations like this.
I think the trends are a reflection of poor education. Fiber/protein/whatever being important components of a diet isn't new information. But the information is new to folks that never had nutrition explained to them.
I did this after it was first posted. My cholesterol is great, but it is a simple enough intervention, I mostly did it for the lols.
Not terribly difficult, you never feel hungry. The worst part was how sore my jaw felt from the excessive chewing of the bulk mass. Which is funny for something so mushy, but my instinct was to chew it a good amount. Also, it is a lot of fiber. Feel like the effect might just have to do with cleaning out every surface of my digestive tract.
I did it as well, 2 days of oatmeal (plus some chicken and toppings) and then oatmeal most days just one meal. Didn’t expect much…my cholesterol dropped 25% over a period of 3 months. One data point, will do another 2 days and see in another 3 months.
Oatmeal has become my favorite breakfast by far. It's delicious and never seems to never give me the "crash" that people describe with other carbs (probably due to it's low GI). Very easy to blend them into my protein shakes after a morning workout too.
Steal-cut oatmeal made in Insta Pot is the best thing in the world. I do 2.5 to 1 ratio. It is important to not let the steam out. It takes about 30 minutes plus another 10 to cool. Set it and forget it. Add raisons and cinnamon at the end. Or, let freshly minced ginger steep with some orange zest.
I make it on the stove top. It also takes 30 minutes to cook and 10 to cool. My ratio of water to dry oatmeal is 3 to 1 by weight in grams and I mix in honey after it's done.
Oatmeal reliably spikes my blood sugar. Not as much as many other carbs, but enough that I avoid it. Each time an insulin resistant person eats it, it causes a little more permanent damage.
Four out of ten US adults are insulin resistant.
I have no idea how to balance the blood sugar damage with the cholesterol damage.
Not all oatmeal has the same effect on blood sugar. Steel cut oats are absorbed more slowly than instant oats. Toppings on your oatmeal also affect blood glucose in non-linear ways, the same as any other combination of foods.
I would think the type and preparation would play a significant role. There's steel cut (which can be made soft or "chewy"), firmer "old fashioned", and the quick dissolving mush that is one-minute.
Use thicker oats, obviously. Also, add some ceylon cinnamon powder to it. Additionally, if you can tolerate it, also add ground fenugreek powder to it to further offset the absorption.
Try oat groats, this will have the lowest GI. You can cook them like rice, even in a rice cooker, using the same technique ... for a firmer result use less water and cook for less time. You can start off with roughly 1:1 ratio of oat groats to water. I do .75 cups oat groats to 1.25 cups water.
This has been widely known in bodybuilding and powerlifting circles, people abusing performance enhancing drugs eat things like oats to mitigate the harmful effects of the drugs on their cholesterol, and regularly do blood work to monitor it and see that it is working.
I've eaten oatmeal for breakfast, have a heart healthy diet, and exercise regularly. My total cholesterol and especially LdL are always massively high.
I have high cholesterol, have had for more than a decade. Was on a statin, they didnt help. Doubled them, they didnt help. Changed my diet radically, lost 25 lbs (I was a little overweight, but not bad), ate full medeteranian diet and did everything I could, my numbers didnt budge. Changed to a stronger one and within two weeks my numbers were perfect.
Used to have a single egg, slice of peperjack cheese draped over it and some fruit. sometimes + meat of some sort. Nothing I thought of as overly unhealthy.
If you make plain oatmeal with less water so that it is thick rather than runny, it can be treated like a side dish like mashed potatoes or polenta in a savory meal. It can be a bit odd at first for people who are used to thinking of oatmeal as a sweetened food but it's something one can get accustomed to quickly and avoids the downside of consuming extra sugar.
I think that was a joke, all those things increase cholesterol. Egg yolks high in bad cholesterol, soy sauce has tons of sodium, and cottage cheese high in fat.
Cottage cheese is quite low in fat for cheese. The one at my local supermarket is 11.3g protein, 2.4g fat, 6.3g carbs, and it's not a diet version.
It's still very salty and most of the carbs are in the form of the sugar lactose, I'm not really recommending it as a health food, it's just comparatively low in fat.
IIRC the relationship between cholesterol and diet is more complicated than eating cholesterol == more cholesterol. Especially in this case you're eating cholesterol with a high-fiber meal which prevents a significant amount of the absorption of it.
I usually eat mine like cereal, uncooked old-fashioned in cold milk, with a bit of honey or brown sugar for flavor. Apparently this is normal overseas.
Steel cut is just a different thing altogether. I like mine a bit on the firm side, with butter, brown sugar. On top, some plain yogurt pair nicely. Cranberries and walnuts are pretty great too.
I think one-minute/instant oatmeal is terrible, no matter how it's prepared, which is unfortunately most people's first experience with oatmeal.
Honey is good, but there is never a reason to add any sugar even if brown. Oatmeal can be sweetened with practically any fruit. Berries work really well, whether dried or fresh. I add wild blueberries.
I soak mine overnight with nuts, in water and a tsp of yogurt, then drain/rinse off in the morning. Steel-cut if I'm cooking it stove-top, large-flake if I'm just microwaving the oats. Serve with the nuts, alongside berries and whatever else.
Years ago I'd sometimes go over-the-top with homemade kefir, cocoa nibs, lemon zest. I stopped the kefir habit not so much because of the hassle but because I didn't want to consume that much volume of dairy every day. I get enough lactic acid from kimchi, and protein from other sources.
Overnight oats have been my go to lunch and pre workout meal for a couple years now.
75g 0% Greek Yogurt,
75g Almond Milk,
10g Maple Syrup,
8g ISOpure unflavored protein powder,
8g PBfit powdered peanut butter,
Salt to taste.
Whisk everything else together in one bowl. Pour over 85g of old fashioned oats and stir.
511 calories, 79g carbs, 30g protein, 9g fat. Easy to tune the recipe to macro targets.
Good: Oat flakes. I like Bob's Red Mill in North America and Karavansay in Colombia. Boil them a short time, drain part or all of the water, and eat them with a little bit of honey or a fruit such as blueberries.
I add 1-2 tbsp of soy milk powder (not to be confused with soy protein powder) which adds bulk. In the end I add wild blueberries to sweeten it. Sometimes I add chia seeds, especially if I can leave it soaked overnight.
I consume these so often for breakfast that I've calibrated the "core" meal many times. Personally I think the optimal amount is less than you would think, to make room for other ingredient pairings like berries, nuts and fermented dairy.
It's not the laziest method but I like soaking them overnight. Without being too fussed about phytic acid in a balanced diet, soaking still improves digestibility and nutrient absorption.
Fiber is the ultimate nutritional power tool.
Not only does fiber reduce cardiovascular mortality by 26% (by cutting cholesterol), surprisingly enough, fiber even reduces your risk of cancer by 22%: https://www.empirical.health/blog/dietary-fiber-reduces-all-...
(Oatmeal is high in fiber, among other things, which I think is part of what's going on here.)
Oatmeal is extra special because of it has high amounts of beta glucan, a soluble fiber.
[dead]
Wait, how does fiber cut cholesterol?
The article is a little densely worded.
iirc, from older articles, which differ from this nice result, bile acids contain cholesterol(s) and they're generally reabsorbed in the intestines, so the fiber is conjectured to bind with some before reabsorption, expelling the bound fraction of circulating cholesterol in feces.
this result in the paper is very interesting in the conjecture is that the gut microbiome is altered in a beneficial way, and that the effect (with the resulting lowering of cholesterol) persists for weeks after even 2 days of oats.
We know almost nothing about how digestion works, but fiber has the added benefit of lining your intestines, preventing the absorption of some nutrients. It also helps push things through, so they spend less time sitting around being absorbed.
In related fashion, you might be interested in reading about the impact of soy protein.
Oh boy. Now we’re entering the fiber era. We’re just leaving the protein era. Before that it was the intermittent fasting era. Before that it was the keto era. The low fat era was probably a few before that.
I hear about fiber constantly all of the sudden. You might be right about it, but how do we know it’s different than. All the past nutrition tends?
I feel like we're due for something really ridiculous next. I've been paying attention to macros, fibre, salt, and having a reasonably varied diet for years; we've done salt, fat, carbs, protein, and now we're doing fibre.
"Eat a varied diet" seems boring but maybe those influencers selling pills made from 500 vegetables were ahead of the curve all along.
It would probably be better to just eat all those different vegetables as part of actual meals to get a varied diet, rather than in pill form.
I was under the impression that more protein and less salt/fat/carbs are still kinda the trend? If more fiber gets added to the mix I guess it is essentially telling people to eat more plants, thus leading to more varied diets overall.
It is funny how you can break diet/nutrition into generations like this.
I think the trends are a reflection of poor education. Fiber/protein/whatever being important components of a diet isn't new information. But the information is new to folks that never had nutrition explained to them.
I'd bet that oatmeal helps cancer due to increased elimination from the GI system, like any fibre
I did this after it was first posted. My cholesterol is great, but it is a simple enough intervention, I mostly did it for the lols.
Not terribly difficult, you never feel hungry. The worst part was how sore my jaw felt from the excessive chewing of the bulk mass. Which is funny for something so mushy, but my instinct was to chew it a good amount. Also, it is a lot of fiber. Feel like the effect might just have to do with cleaning out every surface of my digestive tract.
I did it as well, 2 days of oatmeal (plus some chicken and toppings) and then oatmeal most days just one meal. Didn’t expect much…my cholesterol dropped 25% over a period of 3 months. One data point, will do another 2 days and see in another 3 months.
Oatmeal has become my favorite breakfast by far. It's delicious and never seems to never give me the "crash" that people describe with other carbs (probably due to it's low GI). Very easy to blend them into my protein shakes after a morning workout too.
Steal-cut oatmeal made in Insta Pot is the best thing in the world. I do 2.5 to 1 ratio. It is important to not let the steam out. It takes about 30 minutes plus another 10 to cool. Set it and forget it. Add raisons and cinnamon at the end. Or, let freshly minced ginger steep with some orange zest.
I make it on the stove top. It also takes 30 minutes to cook and 10 to cool. My ratio of water to dry oatmeal is 3 to 1 by weight in grams and I mix in honey after it's done.
Previously (30 days ago, 355 points, 268 comments):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46819809
This is interesting and useful, but it's worth noting that this is ~1200 Calories a day, so that's a lot of what's going on outside the LDL effect.
Oatmeal reliably spikes my blood sugar. Not as much as many other carbs, but enough that I avoid it. Each time an insulin resistant person eats it, it causes a little more permanent damage.
Four out of ten US adults are insulin resistant.
I have no idea how to balance the blood sugar damage with the cholesterol damage.
Not all oatmeal has the same effect on blood sugar. Steel cut oats are absorbed more slowly than instant oats. Toppings on your oatmeal also affect blood glucose in non-linear ways, the same as any other combination of foods.
I would think the type and preparation would play a significant role. There's steel cut (which can be made soft or "chewy"), firmer "old fashioned", and the quick dissolving mush that is one-minute.
Use thicker oats, obviously. Also, add some ceylon cinnamon powder to it. Additionally, if you can tolerate it, also add ground fenugreek powder to it to further offset the absorption.
Try oat groats, this will have the lowest GI. You can cook them like rice, even in a rice cooker, using the same technique ... for a firmer result use less water and cook for less time. You can start off with roughly 1:1 ratio of oat groats to water. I do .75 cups oat groats to 1.25 cups water.
glycemic index of steel cut is low, whereas large-flake is medium-high, and instant oats are high. Though you have to account for load.
My approach is to have a modest amount and increase the nuts and chia mixed with it, alongside berries and yogurt.
This has been widely known in bodybuilding and powerlifting circles, people abusing performance enhancing drugs eat things like oats to mitigate the harmful effects of the drugs on their cholesterol, and regularly do blood work to monitor it and see that it is working.
My doctor had me on statins because I tested with high cholesterol. I switched to oatmeal for breakfast. Stopped statins tested again. Totally normal.
I've eaten oatmeal for breakfast, have a heart healthy diet, and exercise regularly. My total cholesterol and especially LdL are always massively high.
My body hates me.
I have high cholesterol, have had for more than a decade. Was on a statin, they didnt help. Doubled them, they didnt help. Changed my diet radically, lost 25 lbs (I was a little overweight, but not bad), ate full medeteranian diet and did everything I could, my numbers didnt budge. Changed to a stronger one and within two weeks my numbers were perfect.
I believe for some of us its purely genetic.
"Changed to a stronger one"
Changed to a stronger one what?
I assumed they meant a stronger statin.
My LDL is stuck between 145 and 155 permanently. Same for my mom and aunts. Oatmeal, exercise, etc. doesn't help.
I'm still young so my doctor isn't terribly concerned, but in 10 years I'll probably have to be on statins.
What do you mean by heart healthy diet?
Egg whites, lean meats, etc? Strict whole food plant based?
What do you have for breakfast before that if I may ask?
Used to have a single egg, slice of peperjack cheese draped over it and some fruit. sometimes + meat of some sort. Nothing I thought of as overly unhealthy.
All of those things (other than the fruit) have cholesterol. Cheese and meat can also be quite a bit of saturated fat.
Mmm oatmeal. Breakfast of champions. I usually do it for about 330 days a year. Take a month off every once in a while..
How do you take your oatmeal?
If you make plain oatmeal with less water so that it is thick rather than runny, it can be treated like a side dish like mashed potatoes or polenta in a savory meal. It can be a bit odd at first for people who are used to thinking of oatmeal as a sweetened food but it's something one can get accustomed to quickly and avoids the downside of consuming extra sugar.
Savory: add a fried egg, soy sauce, and cottage cheese
Like stirred in? Or as sides?
I think that was a joke, all those things increase cholesterol. Egg yolks high in bad cholesterol, soy sauce has tons of sodium, and cottage cheese high in fat.
Cottage cheese is quite low in fat for cheese. The one at my local supermarket is 11.3g protein, 2.4g fat, 6.3g carbs, and it's not a diet version.
It's still very salty and most of the carbs are in the form of the sugar lactose, I'm not really recommending it as a health food, it's just comparatively low in fat.
IIRC the relationship between cholesterol and diet is more complicated than eating cholesterol == more cholesterol. Especially in this case you're eating cholesterol with a high-fiber meal which prevents a significant amount of the absorption of it.
I like a splash of maple syrup, oat milk, and maybe half a packet of sweetener if I'm feeling cheeky. Cocoa nibs and dried fruits are excellent too.
I use minute oats. Drop in boiling water, toss in a Half handful of raisins or crasins.
Peanut butter, chia seed and banana slices.
I usually eat mine like cereal, uncooked old-fashioned in cold milk, with a bit of honey or brown sugar for flavor. Apparently this is normal overseas.
Steel cut is just a different thing altogether. I like mine a bit on the firm side, with butter, brown sugar. On top, some plain yogurt pair nicely. Cranberries and walnuts are pretty great too.
I think one-minute/instant oatmeal is terrible, no matter how it's prepared, which is unfortunately most people's first experience with oatmeal.
Honey is good, but there is never a reason to add any sugar even if brown. Oatmeal can be sweetened with practically any fruit. Berries work really well, whether dried or fresh. I add wild blueberries.
I soak mine overnight with nuts, in water and a tsp of yogurt, then drain/rinse off in the morning. Steel-cut if I'm cooking it stove-top, large-flake if I'm just microwaving the oats. Serve with the nuts, alongside berries and whatever else.
Years ago I'd sometimes go over-the-top with homemade kefir, cocoa nibs, lemon zest. I stopped the kefir habit not so much because of the hassle but because I didn't want to consume that much volume of dairy every day. I get enough lactic acid from kimchi, and protein from other sources.
Overnight oats have been my go to lunch and pre workout meal for a couple years now.
75g 0% Greek Yogurt, 75g Almond Milk, 10g Maple Syrup, 8g ISOpure unflavored protein powder, 8g PBfit powdered peanut butter, Salt to taste. Whisk everything else together in one bowl. Pour over 85g of old fashioned oats and stir.
511 calories, 79g carbs, 30g protein, 9g fat. Easy to tune the recipe to macro targets.
Cholesterol numbers are great.
Good: Oat flakes. I like Bob's Red Mill in North America and Karavansay in Colombia. Boil them a short time, drain part or all of the water, and eat them with a little bit of honey or a fruit such as blueberries.
Bad: Oatly
I add 1-2 tbsp of soy milk powder (not to be confused with soy protein powder) which adds bulk. In the end I add wild blueberries to sweeten it. Sometimes I add chia seeds, especially if I can leave it soaked overnight.
Buttered
From what LDL-C or AboB level to what?
Is it the oatmeal itself or the glyphosate present in all oatmeal?
> Participants followed a calorie restricted plan made up almost entirely of oatmeal for 48 hours.
Oatmeal is great, but a calorie restricted diet made practically entirely of oatmeal isn't exactly a useful determinant.
I consume these so often for breakfast that I've calibrated the "core" meal many times. Personally I think the optimal amount is less than you would think, to make room for other ingredient pairings like berries, nuts and fermented dairy.
It's not the laziest method but I like soaking them overnight. Without being too fussed about phytic acid in a balanced diet, soaking still improves digestibility and nutrient absorption.
[dead]